utpouring of loving, hungry hearts. They will keep you if they can, my
dear. I do not blame them. The life I propose for you is one of work,
mostly for others, and the reward, in great part, consists of the joy in
the soul of the creator of things that help in the world. I realize that
you will find wealth, luxury, and lavish love. I know that I may lose
you forever, and if it is right and best for you, I hope I will. I know
exactly what I am risking, but I yet say, go."

"I don't see how you can, and love me as you prove you do."

"That is a little streak of the inevitableness of nature that the forest
has ground into my soul. I'd rather cut off my right hand than take
yours with it, in the parting that will come in the morning; but you are
going, and I am sending you. So long as I am shaped like a human being,
it is in me to dignify the possession of a vertical spine by acting as
nearly like a man as I know how. I insist that you are my wife, because
it crucifies me to think otherwise. I tell you to-night, Ruth, you are
not and never have been. You are free as air. You married me without any
love for me in your heart, and you pretended none. It was all my doing.
If I find that I was wrong, I will free you without a thought of results
to me. I am a secondary proposition. I thought then that you were alone
and helpless, and before the Almighty, I did the best I could. But I
know now that you are entitled to the love of relatives, wealth, and
high social position, no doubt. If I allowed the passion in my heart
to triumph over the reason of my brain, and worked on your feelings and
tied you to the woods, without knowing but that you might greatly prefer
that other life you do not know, but to which you are entitled, I would
go out and sink myself in Loon Lake."

"David, I love you. I do not want to go. Please, please let me remain
with you."

"Not if you could say that realizing what it means, and give me the kiss
right now I would stake my soul to win! Not by any bribe you can think
of or any allurement you can offer. It is right that you go to those
suffering old people. It is right you know what you are refusing for me,
before you renounce it. It is right you take the position to which you
are entitled, until you understand thoroughly whether this suits you
better. When you know that life as well as this, the people you will
meet as intimately as me, then you can decide for all time, and I can
look you in the face w